David at Forking Mad seems to think that people should have comments sections on their blogs. I disagree with him.
Not because I can’t be arsed to moderate a comments section. However, I really can’t be bothered. Nuking individual spammy/abusive comments might indeed be “a moment’s work”, but the moments add up and I’m not getting any younger.
I currently have a guestbook where I find myself occasionally obliged to wear the moderator hat. I don’t have an exhaustive set of rules there; just don’t be an asshole. I haven’t had many abusive posts yet. Just one, really. I deleted it on sight and blocked the poster’s IP address, and then spent an hour second-guessing myself. Was I being unreasonable and arbitrary? Was I indulging in a power trip? Did this random stranger have a legitimate point that I had summarily dismissed because I found their delivery both peremptory and presumptuous?
It doesn’t really matter. It’s my website. It’s my guestbook. The First Amendment does not protect you here, but it protects my right to maintain editorial control over my website and guestbook.
While I am opposed to censorship as a matter of principle, that is precisely why I think you should have your own website.
If you were to post something like Matthew is a pretentious twit whose fiction makes
on my guestbook, I would delete it for no other reason than that I damned well could.
Principles be damned.
${AUTHOR} look like a Nobel laureate
Why? Like my depravity, my hypocrisy knows few bounds. Why do you think I have a guestbook in the first place? Because I’m only human, and most human beings fail to consistently live up to their own ideals. We call the ones who do ‘saints’, but generally only after they’ve been dead long enough that their inconvenient humanity can be safely ignored.
But you need not fear any tendency toward censoriousness or hypocrisy I might have. If you post your opinions about me on your website, there is absofuckinlutely nothing I can do about it. What am I going to do, file a libel suit, or sue in civil court for defamation of character or emotional distress? Oh, please. Even I am not that petty (or so I hope). Besides, I might not ever even learn about it unless somebody brings it to my attention. Even then I might manage not to let myself care; is what other people think of me really any of my business?
Furthermore, kami has some reasonable concerns about the privacy implications of comment sections. I don’t want you to have to make an account just because you have something to say about something I’ve written. I do not want to have to keep your information safe. I do not want to have to deal with requests to hand over your data to law enforcement. I do not want to have to deal with GDPR-related requests to see what data of yours I possess or delete it. I don’t get paid enough for any of that.
It’s not because I don’t care about what others think, either. I would like to hear from you, Occasional Reader, but only on my terms. What David wants when he writes...
I read so many amazing blog posts, and a few crazy ones too -- but weird is good!
But why can't I interact with your blog post?
Sometimes I just want to say 'Great post'. Other times I'd like to follow-up and reinforce your own thoughts. Occasionally I'd appreciate the opportunity to discuss it further.
...is not something I am willing to provide. Basically, starbreaker.org is my soapbox. I would tell David that he should get his own, but he already has one.
Nobody is stopping him or anybody else from interacting with my website or anything I publish here. You can copy portions of the text and quote them (preferably with links and attribution) in your own blog. You can hit “view source” and figure out how the HTML works if you think I’ve done something cool and want to know how to do it on your own website. You can email me; I even made a point of ensuring that my reply links put the post title in the subject line so that you need not copy and paste it.
My website is basically a billboard, but it is not a billboard for rent to anybody who wants to propagate their own message. I built it for my use. It is my online equivalent of a fortress of solitude. Its permissions are 744: I have read/write/execute access. Everybody else gets read-only access.
David also asks...
However, has society become so socially embarrassed that you read something and have absolutely no thought about it? Are you genuinely completely disengaged and want to offer nothing?
I won’t speak for society, but the fact that I am quoting him, linking to his post, and commenting on his writing here on my website should tell you that I am engaged, that I am offering something, and that I am interacting. He might never see it, since he thinks being emailed about stuff written on blogs is “pointless”, but that’s his problem.
Unlike him, I know what to do if I want to have my say about something I read on somebody else’s website. I don’t expect people to provide me with a platform for my views. I have my own platform, which I run at my own expense; I’m paying the cost to be the boss.
If you don’t have your own website and you think emailing me is pointless, then don’t expect me to let you post your opinion here. Keep it to yourself; it’s my site.